Volume I, Issue vi

February 1999

How We Watch: What Space/Time Continnum, Mulder? by Amy McWilliams

My mother hates soap operas.

When my sister and I were little, we weren't allowed to watch certain television shows. Sometimes it was because things were scary; my sister kept us from watching Superfriends for years because she would have nightmares about it. I had this vague notion that the other shows in question were something my parents called "risqué," but I wasn't at all sure what that meant. Risqué shows included, for example, The Dukes of Hazzard, MASH, All in the Family, The Tonight Show, and soap operas. From that, I deduced that "risqué" sometimes meant kissing and/or short shorts and at other times it was something that made sense only to adults. Turns out, mom only had two criteria for ruling out programs: 1) they were on too late (for years, my sister thought that The Sound of Music ended at the wedding because she had to go to bed in the middle of it), 2) they were just plain stupid (oddly enough, we watched both ChiPs and The Love Boat regularly; she can't explain that).

For mom, soap operas came under the second category. I remember, on the grade school bus in 1981, hearing about the wedding of Luke and Laura. I pleaded with mom to let me watch it. No dice. I knew I liked soap operas, or thought I did; my sister and I had sometimes stayed after school with an older lady from our church. She had a fish tank, a vegetable garden, and a row of mason jars filled with candy of all shapes and sizes. We were allowed to fill a small bowl with our selections, and then we'd lie in the floor on our stomachs and watch her "story" with her--The Young and the Restless. I remember three scenes. In the first, an attractive brunette girl was sitting in bed; on the other side of the wall sat an attractive brunette boy in his bed, and they were obviously in love. I had never seen anything so romantic. The second took place in the stable, and I have a vague idea of somebody being injured. Finally, I remember somebody getting married in their hospital room.

My junior year of High School, then, I enrolled in Advanced Placement English. As it so happened, it was an all-girl class with a female teacher. Several of the girls watched Days of Our Lives, as did our teacher, and when we talked about literary figures they would sometimes mention characters and stories from their soap. Of course I wanted to watch. I never did, however, until the day we were talking about anti-heroes with regards to some text I don't remember. What I do remember is the poster somebody brought in to define "anti-hero" in terms of DOOL--Stephen Nichols as "Patch Johnson." Yum. My friend Rachel and I were hooked, and I watched when I could after school. Rachel and I watched DOOL through the rest of High School and into college, where we were roommates. She watched almost daily, and kept me in touch with what was going on, as I went weeks and months without actually seeing an episode.

When I moved to graduate school, I lived by myself and knew nobody at first, so I turned back to DOOL as part of a routine--as something to do over dinner each night, as something familiar. Soaps were never-ending stories of characters you knew as family, that you spent your life with, and the genre was perfect for somebody who loved storytelling, in any form, as much as I do. I was hooked on the form, but not on the show. The best friend I made that year also watched, so we chatted about it. That worked for a while, but I grew increasingly bored with things, and about the time Marlena was demon-possessed, I started shopping for a new soap. By the time I quit DOOL, I was watching the whole thing in fastforward.

I've told this story before, but the second day I watched, Luke told Lulu a homemade fairy tale about those apple-throwing tree toads you hear so much about, and I've been hooked on him ever since. Luckily for me, Laura was in the process of having to explain a lot of things to her family, so I got the Spencer history down, in nutshell form, quickly. As for the rest, I pieced lots of things together with the help of ratsa, but found opportunities to see things on tape as well. Through the generosity of ratsa friends I've received a tape of the Norma and Eve storyline and seen parts of all the major storylines from the Spencers' return in the fall of 1993 on. I've also got tapes of some stuff from the mid-'80s waiting for me in the closet, and am making my way (along with most of the other editors) through the Luke and Laura stuff from the early '80s. It's the best history homework I've ever had to do.

It means, however, that at any given time I'm watching GH at three or four different points in the time line. Currently, I'm watching episodes from 1980, 1994, 1996, and 1999. Talk about a time warp! It's amazing, however, to see how well the old and not-so-old episodes inform the stuff that's happening today, and watching Luke and Laura's split after the Left-Handed Boy in tandem with their current split has been sheer heaven.

The other weirdness in the way I watch is that I write so much about the show. In various forms, I've been writing about GH since the second week I've been watching, and I've been reading other people's opinions as well. My discussions with the women who now help me edit and write most of the GHR are extensive and all encompassing (well, ok, we don't talk much about Dara). To watch GH without them would be a completely different experience, and it's one I hope I never have to do without completely.

When I go home on holidays, I set my parents' VCR to tape GH each day. As we sit at the table playing our 27th game of Yahtzee (she always wins), mom hears the machine whir softly to life, cocks one eyebrow, and says, "Are you taping your soap opera?" I tell her that I am, and note that it's her fault, after all. She never let me watch as a kid. "Well," she replies, "if that's the worst thing you ever do, you'll be doing pretty well."